June 21, 2008 Land a Job, Then What? Graduates Adjust to Life With No Going Back By CARA BUCKLEY It is a bittersweet time for freshly sprung college graduates, at least those lucky enough to have landed jobs. Summer is here, with its sunny days and sultry nights, and for many young people working their first real jobs, it will be a summer reconfigured. Those who are gainfully employed may be basking in the glow of finding work in a tough market, but their joy is often tempered by a nostalgia of sorts. They are, after all, entering the first summer of the rest of their lives: the deeply ingrained cycle of school followed by summers “off” — whether that meant camp or a short-term job or an internship — is over. There is no college to return to after Labor Day, and no real end in sight. Most will be fortunate to get a week off before the warm weather ends. “You always knew that after summer, you go back to classes. And after classes, you have a summer,” said Katie Dinterman, 23, who graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last December and who now works at a public relations firm in Midtown Manhattan. “It’s very crazy to think that you don’t have an end point,” she said. “It definitely stresses me out.” Nearly 20,500 degree holders between the ages of 22 and 28 streamed into New York City in 2006, according to an analysis by the sociology department at Queens College, though it is unclear how many are flocking to the city this year. Ms. Dinterman said that she was thrilled to have landed work, and in New York City to boot. She started working in January, her graduation date giving her a jump on the collegiate hordes that flooded the job market at spring’s end. Still, Ms. Dinterman said she felt a little wistful for the summers when she was an intern, with fewer responsibilities and weekends and evenings that were invariably work free. She lives on the Upper East Side and is planning weekend trips “off the island,” because, like many people in the working world, she now has two weeks of vacation a year. “I’m not near a window,” Ms. Dinterman said of her office space, “So I never really know what it’s like outside.” Amanda Zalka, 22, is starting to feel a disconnection between her life and the lives of her friends. Many of them are planning long summer holidays, because they are beginning their jobs later in the summer or are still looking for work. Ms. Zalka graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia in February, and started working as an assistant account executive for an advertising agency in SoHo in March. To ease the transition to working straight through the summer, she is planning to go to “some kind of beach” every weekend, and spent a recent Sunday at Water Taxi Beach, a tiny faux beach in Queens that is separated from the East River by a chain-link fence. “When you’re in college, you have three and a half months of vacation,” said Ms. Zalka, who grew up in Budapest. “Before I did internships, I literally would go home and relax for three and a half months, and drive my mother crazy.” Still, Ms. Zalka is firmly in the honeymoon phase after gaining what she describes as an ideal job. Had she not found work, she said, her summer would have been overtaken by the stress of looking for one. “Everything is new and exciting, and it’s nice to be part of a team,” she said. “At the same time, you start to think, ‘Am I going to be able to do that for 50 years, every day, while having one week of vacation somewhere?’ This has definitely crossed my mind, but I’m not worrying about it yet.” Some recent graduates are nervous about starting full-time work. Gia Branciforte, 21, who graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May, is working a summer job at a nonprofit agency in Chapel Hill. She will move back to her native Queens in August to work full time at a nonprofit agency, and already feels trepidation at the prospect of vastly fewer vacation days. “I have such wanderlust,” she said. “That’s the part that makes me nostalgic, not being able to just get up and go.” Liz Clain, 21, who just graduated from Harvard, and will begin work at a health care consulting firm in Boston in August, feels a mild uneasiness, too. “I have the upcoming two months of freedom before the rest of my life,” she said. She is also thinking about going to medical school one day. “And that kind of makes it easier,” she said, “going into it knowing that I do have an end in sight.” Of course, many recent graduates are content just to have found a job and to be able to start paying off loans. “This is my second summer being out of college; I kind of had extra time to enjoy myself,” said Fabienne Carroll, 23, who recently got hired at Girlie Action, a public relations and marketing firm serving the music industry. “And yeah, I have loans to pay off. A lot.” Kai Johnson, 22, who graduated from Wesleyan University in May, is working at the Greater New York chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice, a nonprofit, for the summer, and will begin teaching English in France in the fall. “I’m really excited to move on to the next chapter of my life,” he said, “although it’s hard to graduate from college and leave that behind.” Still, his summer job is part time, so he does not feel trapped, he said, at least not yet. “I’m looking at having a couple of different careers in different areas, with a couple years of commitment,” he said. “I’m not looking to having a 30- or 40-year plan.” Eavvon O’Neal, who is 23, graduated from West Chester University of Pennsylvania in May 2007, and, to his delight, started work at Pitchfork Media, a music Web site, this past March. “I couldn’t get a job until now,” he said. “I was on an extended vacation that we all don’t want to call unemployment.” His job is a perfect fit, he said, partly because he can still dress like a college student and see a lot of concerts. Indeed, his office, with its haphazardly arranged desks and piles of books and CDs, has a ramshackle air, not unlike a dorm room. Mr. O’Neal had been yearning for a job so long, he said, that the prospect of having few vacation days did not faze him in the least. “I was so looking forward to having a job that I’m not too eager to get away from it just yet,” he said. Asked whether he felt nostalgic for the breezy summers of his past, Mr. O’Neal said that he felt “kind of pensive” instead. “This is the threshold from college student to adult,” he said, “that you don’t really understand until you’ve experienced the whole thing.”